Not As Much of a Jerk As You Could Have Been AU

[for_everyone]

Hera left the bridge as they fell out of hyperspace near the edge of the Unknown Regions. It was their first opportunity to make contact with the rest of the Resistance in nearly three weeks, and she had decided to do so in her ready room, fully expecting back and forth with Admiral Ackbar and General Organa concerning her overtures toward the Chiss. It also meant that she took the very rare step of leaving Thrawn alone on her bridge.

It takes longer than expected for her to get a signal through to Leia. And when she finally does, she's quickly glad she chose to have this conversation in private.

It's nearly an hour before she has sent word back to the bridge. Coordinates, closest to the Reviya system, nearly on the edge of Wild Space. These are the only instructions, along with a note to Thrawn to join her as soon as possible.

Without a pause for confirmation, the officers move to their stations to calculate the jump.

Comments

[grandadmiralartcritic]

He wants to let go of his water, clasp his hands behind his back, take shelter in the bedrock of old commands and old habit, but --

"Many, yes. But . . . no, not all. Not all by a not-insignificant margin."

[for_everyone]

Again, she waits.

She's not really sure what to ask, and even less sure of whether she should voice the next question coming together in her mind. But -

"What do you think made you different from them?"

[grandadmiralartcritic]

"I have always fostered a certain . . . distance. It proved useful when I was young, and only grew moreso as I grew older."

No Chiss is particularly demonstrative, but there is a certain set of tenets and personal loyalties that any citizen of the Ascendancy is expected to honor and understand.

[for_everyone]

Her eyes stay down.

"I don't remember having the option of 'distance.'"

[grandadmiralartcritic]

"You would, I think, have had to cut some part of yourself away in order to choose that, General."

Thrawn's voice is mostly matter-of-fact.

"Would you have let yourself truly look at such a choice?"

[for_everyone]

She raises her eyes, up from the floor, but doesn't look back at him.

"How much did you study my kalikori?"

[grandadmiralartcritic]

Thrawn does not flinch back. If he did not, then, and in fact taunted her with his possession of it, to do so now would be . . . cowardly.

"As well as any outsider could, I had imagined. Though not, it would seem, well enough."

A pause.

"I am sorry. That was . . . unkind."

The whole of it, really, from beginning to end.

[for_everyone]

Again, she listens, eyes still forward, not a glance flickered toward him this time.

"What did you deduce from it?"

[grandadmiralartcritic]

"That your family was tight-knit but . . . much diminished in this time. Is tight-knit, I hope, even still."

This is . . . really considerably awkward.

"Is it that closeness that made some things no choice at all? Or was it the freedom fighters in your line of descent?"

[for_everyone]

Hera lowers her head, her eyes flickering closed.

"I had a brother."

Her words are slow, like it takes effort to keep them still. "Did you know that?"

[grandadmiralartcritic]

"Ah."

His voice is quiet. But --

"Yes, I'm afraid I did."

[for_everyone]

She takes a breath, opening her eyes. It seems strange, for it to strike at her so deeply. This was all such a long time ago, many other lives ago. But she'd also rarely thought about so plainly as she does now.

"He was - a little over a year younger than me. And until I was six, I was never alone."

[grandadmiralartcritic]

"I . . . "

How to put this? Thrawn trails off briefly, searching out what will hopefully be a series of accurate but non-offensive words.

"I might have expected such a loss, so early in life, to harden your heart rather than . . . open it."

[for_everyone]

She takes another deep breath, and then -

"Why?"

[grandadmiralartcritic]

"Pain is generally unwelcome, and most, I should think, prefer to run from it where they can."

Is Thrawn such a one?

It is beginning to occur to him that --

Well.

Yes.

[for_everyone]

Her eyebrows furrow, like she's really considering a strange, foreign sentiment. Then, slowly, she speaks again.

"My father asked me to light the pyre for my brother."

Her hands fidget, eventually folding into one another.

"It was rare for - a parent always lights for their child, if they have to. He told me I'd known him, as they hadn't, so I should be the one to say goodbye to him."

Very slightly, she tilts her head. "But I'd heard him with my mother. Telling her I needed to learn - because I'd light many after it."

Hera blinks down to the floor again. "I'd never expected a life without pain."

[grandadmiralartcritic]

"He prepared you well for the life that awaited you, your father. I am sorry for your loss."

A pause.

"Among the Chiss, avoiding pain is a sign of wisdom, of skill, of -- "

His fingers open and close away from the water bottle, as if he is grasping for something he cannot quite touch.

"It is physical pain to which we refer. A being who is not captured, who does not fail -- what has a person such as that to worry about from pain?"

[for_everyone]

Again, Hera tilts her head, slightly the other way this time.

"Plenty, once they do fail."

[grandadmiralartcritic]

His smile is thin-lipped and lacking in humor.

"That is true. And yet we, as a people -- to think that way is to begin from a place of failure."

[for_everyone]

"I don't know how that protects you," Hera says quietly.

"It sounds like a threat, to always make you vulnerable."

[grandadmiralartcritic]

"Perhaps it is a way in which the Aristocra keep control. Perhaps there are others in Chiss society much better at questioning this conviction than I was. Than -- as seems transparent just now -- I am. I cannot say."

He never looked, for one.

"I am also not certain such a way of thinking is meant to protect the individual so much as it is to . . . guard the psyche of an entire species."

[for_everyone]

"As in..."

She presses her lips together, thinking over her words. "... questioning that control could create conflict?"

[grandadmiralartcritic]

Thrawn inclines his head.

"I think it very likely. It would not be an unworthy conflict, to be sure. But it is one the Aristocra could not prefer."

[for_everyone]

Hera waits another moment.

"Was there anything that could've made you - question that conviction?"

[grandadmiralartcritic]

Thrawn falls silent, turning that question over in his mind.

Then --

"Given how long I remained in the Empire's service -- perhaps if my defeat and imprisonment and the resultant time to think with no active action on the horizon to keep myself distracted had happened earlier -- but even then, arrogance is . . . a very thick shield to penetrate, at times."